The (hidden) Benefits of Monitoring

A second attempt

Hauke Roggenkamp https://www.linkedin.com/in/haukeroggenkamp/ (Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence in Climate, Climatic Change, and Society)https://www.cliccs.uni-hamburg.de/about-cliccs.html , Alexander C. Sebald https://sites.google.com/view/alexandersebald/main (Copenhagen Business School)https://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-economics , Georg Kirchsteiger https://gkirchst.ulb.be/ (European Center of Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics, Université Libre de Bruxelles)https://ecares.ulb.be/
2022-03-30

Monitoring

Agents who have a productivity larger than \(50\) are predicted to feel treated kindly, if they are monitored by their principals. Agents with lower productivity should feel treated unkindly. If agents are reciprocal, they are predicted to pass back this perceived kindness (unkindness) by performing better (worse) than in the first stage.

Practically, one has to take into consideration that (1) it is easier for productive agents to diminish their performance, as they have a higher starting point (and therefore, more room for deterioration) and that (2) it is harder to pass back kindness (by being more productive) than to pass back unkindness (by shirking).

  Pre-Registerd RDD Post-Collection
Predictors Estimates CI p Estimates CI p Estimates CI p
(Intercept) -7.33 -15.07 – 0.40 0.063 2.62 -17.15 – 22.38 0.793 -2.71 -5.27 – -0.14 0.039
productivity 0.14 -0.02 – 0.30 0.096 -0.14 -0.67 – 0.38 0.590
productiveTRUE 3.29 -43.28 – 49.86 0.888 4.19 0.17 – 8.22 0.041
productivity *
productiveTRUE
0.07 -0.80 – 0.94 0.873
Observations 79 79 79
R2 / R2 adjusted 0.036 / 0.023 0.057 / 0.019 0.053 / 0.041

Predictions

\[ \begin{align} U_i(l_i(h),(b_{ij}(h))_{i\neq j},(c_{iji}(h))_{i\neq j}) & = \pi_i(l_i(h),b_{ij}(h))_{i\neq j}) \\ & + Y_{ij} \cdot \kappa_{ij}(l_i(h), b_{ij}(h))_{i\neq j}) \cdot \lambda_{iji}((b_{ij}(h))_{i\neq j},(c_{iji}(h))_{i\neq j}) \\ & - c_i(l_i(h)) \\ & + \sigma_i(l_i(h)) \end{align} \]

(Strategic) Ignorance

Focusing on agents who are not being ignored by their principals, one cannot compare the first stage’s productivity with the second stage’s performance, as the strategic environment is completely different. After all agents that are paid randomly have no incentive to exert any effort at all.